Dieting and exercise are the fundamentals behind successful weight loss, but many people find themselves in a perpetual cycle of frustration after losing weight one minute, only to find it come roaring back a couple months down the road. Rebound weight gain can happen for a number of reasons, including biological factors and lifestyle choices.

Hormones secreted by the pancreas, the gut, and your body’s fatty tissues affect your body’s weight, your hunger levels, and your ability to burn calories. When you lose weight, leptin levels decrease. Leptin is the hormone responsible for telling you when you’re full.

At the same time, ghrelin (the hormone that signals when you’re hungry) increases when you lose weight. Therefore, if you lost most of your weight through dieting and don’t stick to the same nutrition plan once the weight is off, you can quickly gain it back.

High-fat diets and a failure to make permanent lifestyle changes can also lead to rebound weight gain. Many people struggle because they do everything right to get the weight to disappear, but once it’s gone, they “let up”, and before they even realize it, the weight creeps its way back.

If you’re concerned about losing fat only to get it right back, the following tips on how to stop rebound weight gain can help you.

Set Goals And Identify Your Ideal Weight

In order to stop rebound weight gain, you should first figure out what your ideal weight is. If you step on the scale and you’re way off that number, you know it’s time to cut your calories and/or up your activity level to maintain the body you want.

Always having a target weight in mind helps you stay on track and serves as a gentle reminder to make changes if you start to fall off the wagon so-to-speak.

Find Your Reason For Staying Healthy

You are much more likely to avoid rebound weight gain if you have a reason to stay healthy. Find the reason that really means something to you.

For example, maybe you want to look great for the high school reunion you have coming up in 5 years. Maybe you have friends or family who died young due to weight problems, and you don’t want to become the next statistic. Maybe you just want to feel energetic and be more mobile so you can do more things in life.

Having a reason to get fit will help keep you motivated to overcome any obstacle standing in your way.

Be Ready By Creating A Recovery Plan

What’s the plan if the weight starts coming back? Do you have one?

It’s important to take action right away because being 5lbs overweight can quickly become 20 or 30lbs if you keep putting it off until tomorrow. Have a plan to cut out certain foods or up your activity level if you notice things going in the wrong direction.

Turn Your Routines Into Habits

If you want to stop rebound weight gain, turn your eating and workout routines into habit. Don’t just make them something you do when you need to lose weight. Instead, make them permanent lifestyle changes.

You can cheat here and there, enjoy a greasy meal every now and then, or skip a workout or two, but never just stop and revert to old habits. When you turn health into a habit, rebound weight gain doesn’t stand a chance.

Sometimes it happens. The romance and magic of a relationship suddenly fades away.

Your girlfriend is still smoking hot, but there’s no spark anymore. It doesn’t matter what either of you look like. It doesn’t matter how irresistible you used to find each other.

The girl you couldn’t keep your hands off not too long ago may as well be just another piece of furniture in your apartment, with the lack of sexual attraction you now feel towards her.

You may be wondering what happened, and you may be asking yourself: “Why am I not attracted to my hot girlfriend anymore?”

Well, first off, know that it’s normal to go through both peaks and valleys in the course of a relationship. There’s nothing wrong with you, necessarily, nor is there anything in particular wrong with her or your relationship. Sometimes we all experience lulls in our attraction towards another person.

A lack of attraction may indicate a problem between two people that needs to be dealt with before sexual intimacy can resume in earnest, but not always. So let’s very briefly discuss a few reasons to explain your sudden lack of desire.

1. Psychological Issues

No, you’re not crazy. But sometimes doubts or nagging questions about the nature or future of a relationship can legitimately interfere with your ability to feel sexually attracted to your partner. These include questions regarding fidelity and questions about whether or not you want the same things out of life.

Sometimes over the course of a relationship, personalities change dramatically, particularly if you’re both young or at a major transitional point in your lives. The person you were at the beginning of a relationship does not necessarily remain constant throughout, and you both may find that your paths are diverging.

Despite your desire to stay together, life itself may be working to gradually separate you. This is an unpleasant reality, to be sure, and one that’s difficult to face. Stress and/or a lack of an emotional connection can be detrimental to the attraction (or lack thereof) you feel for your hot girlfriend.

The best thing to do in a situation like this is to have a frank and honest discussion in which you express your feelings and get a read on her emotions, as well. Obviously, if your lack of attraction is caused by suspicions of infidelity or general untrustworthiness, this may be a situation which necessitates some professional assistance (therapy). But the first step is to be open with your partner and see what she’s feeling, as well.

2. Physical Issues

Physical issues are not only limited to impotence or questions regarding the nature of your own sexuality.

A recent study found that more and more men of a relatively young age are finding it difficult to become aroused by an honest-to-goodness human being due to the amount of pornography they watch on a daily or weekly basis. Basically, they’re under-stimulated by their partner because they’re being over-stimulated elsewhere.

One of the best things you can do to maintain a healthy relationship and an attraction between you and your woman is to decrease your visual consumption of porn and other overtly sexual stimuli. If you’re getting aroused and turned on by porn or something else, then having a hot girlfriend may not stimulate you the way it used to. This, in turn, causes you to feel like you aren’t attracted to her anymore.

Attraction has both a physical and emotional component. Avoid sexual stimulation that doesn’t involve your girlfriend and see if that changes how you feel about her. Try to fix any problems that might be causing you to pull away emotionally. These small changes could be a very simple answer to why you are no longer attracted to your hot girlfriend.